and a middle-aged man approached our kiosk, his eyes skipping across our reception line of artificial smiles. He focused on Blythe.
“Welcome to Huatulco,” she said blandly, reaching for their documents.
“You’re on Ameera’s bus. Bus Number Three, over that way folks,” Oscar said with forced cheer.
A group of four young men wearing khakis and T-shirts bearing my alma mater’s logo asked about welcome drinks and Manuela promised them that they’d be sitting at an overflowing bar in an hour. I was about to ask them about campus life, but a beverage vendor yelled, “Cerveza fría! Cold beer here!” and the men followed his voice, like lemmings over a cliff.
A young couple with three children was among the last to approach the kiosk. The mother drooped under the weight of a sleepy toddler, while a young boy and a slightly older girl clung to her thighs. The father dragged a squeaky cart with three suitcases and four overstuffed — and threatening to topple — backpacks in various Disney motifs. Manuela directed the family to my bus, when suddenly their eldest girl ran off toward the tarmac, yelling, “I want to go home!” I dropped my clipboard and gave chase. I scooped her into my arms, and the girl sputtered a surprised laugh, her cheeks reddening. I giggled along with her as I ushered her dazed-looking parents onto my bus.
Before climbing aboard, I gazed at the afternoon sky to watch the outbound flight of vacationers, including the bodybuilders, fly away home.
Azeez
∞
June 21, 1985, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
I’d been watching her for a full ten minutes. She sat at the table next to mine, reading a textbook entitled Understanding World Religions. It was the first day of summer and my second last in Canada.
She absent-mindedly played with her long auburn hair, her fingers moving like a magician’s, conjuring it into a single braid. She didn’t tie off the end, and her hair eventually resisted the arrangement and pulled itself free.
I nibbled my honey cruller, and waited for her to notice me. For another ten minutes, I scripted my words. I was a chatty fellow back then, but it took immense bravery to speak to a woman I didn’t know. I chided myself: what did it matter if I sounded like a fool?
“That looks like interesting reading.”
She glanced up, and her cheeks blushed crimson. I loved when white girls did that. It just isn’t the same with brown girls; their pigment allows them to mute their embarrassment. The girl smiled and nodded and returned to her textbook, her lavender highlighter squeaking across the page. But I could tell she was no longer concentrating on the material.
My mother once told me that my best feature was my straight white teeth. So when the girl gazed in my direction again, I flashed a wide grin. I ran my fingers through my coarse black hair and patted it down, then feared that I might have salted my shoulders with dandruff.
“It’s not bad. Dry, but okay.” Her tone was friendly. She looked at me with large, round eyes. What colour were they? Hazel? Light brown? I sat up to stretch my five-foot-seven frame a little taller. I surmised we were about the same height.
“Have you reached the chapter on Islam yet? I’d be happy to explain anything you don’t grasp. I’m Muslim, you know.” Not exactly a worthy pickup line, but I was no Casanova.
“I’m reading it now, actually.” She turned the book toward me and indeed, there was a photo of a gold-domed mosque on the page.
“I’m not a very strict Muslim, but there are many things about Islam that I appreciate.” I rambled on about it being a religion of peace and equality. I spoke with uncharacteristic enthusiasm; I hadn’t prayed or fasted since I’d come to Canada just over five years earlier to begin my PhD. The photo of the mosque made me think that I should visit the masjid when I went home. It would please my parents.
“I imagine all the world’s religions share that. At their core, they’re good. It’s people who cause all the problems.” The girl looked across the empty parking lot then, and I wondered what had suddenly made her pensive. I took the opportunity to study her freckles. They dotted their way down her neck to her chest. She wore an orange blouse that cut low across her large breasts. She was pleasantly plump around her midsection.
“True,” I took another bite of my donut and its waxy coating flaked across my lap.
“I’m Nora.” She reached out a hand and her scent of sandalwood wafted over. Her palm was cool, her grip firm.
“How is that spelled?” I can be idiotic when nervous. She spelled it slowly and then asked me my name.
“Spell it,” she joked. With false bravado, I grabbed a pen from her table and wrote A-Z-E-E-Z on a paper napkin.
“I like names with double e’s. And look, two zeds.” She studied my block lettering.
“So do my parents. They gave my brother and sister double e names, too.” I wrote their names under my own and underlined the vowels. A well of sadness came over me then; I missed my siblings. I should have been excited for our reunion in two days. But perhaps a part of me knew something different.
I turned the conversation to her, asking her dozens of questions, which she seemed to like. I learned that she was an only child, had grown up in Hamilton, and had almost completed her B.A. She’ d applied to do her Masters in Anthropology. Perhaps one day she’ d do a PhD. She was an ambivalent Catholic (she pointed to chapter three of her textbook dismissively).
Eventually, I took a deep breath and asked if she had a boyfriend and she blushed again and shook her head.
I bought her a double-double and I had another tea and cruller. When she invited me to her apartment to listen to her cassette-tape collection, I gladly accepted.
Ameera
∆
After my shift, I returned to my room, but Blythe and her boyfriend Rhion were arguing again, their voices ringing across our shared wall.
“I was daft to ever trust you, you bastard!”
Rhion murmured something back.
“How could you do this to me?”
Murmur, murmur, murmur.
∆
I decamped to the staff cafeteria, and sat in the back corner where there was a Wi-Fi signal. I checked my e-mail on my phone, most of it junk. The last message to load was from Anita, my manager. The subject line read “Online Complaint.” Curious, I clicked it open.
Dear Ameera,
I’m writing to notify you that we received an anonymous complaint through our online comment form today. Although a record of it will be filed in your employee record, we will not follow up unless there are repeated complaints of a similar nature (it’s nearly impossible to investigate when there is no contact information left by the complainant).
It said, “Ameera is not professional. She’s sexually inappropriate with Atlantis customers. She is a bad example.”
I trust
